Avoid Watford for the next few days. That’s always sound advice, but the Bilderbergers are arriving as I type. It’s shutouts, lockdowns, armed police and Britons living nearby having to show their papers just to go home.

What’s notable is the speed at which the secrecy around the annual conspirators is blowing away as global attention intensifies exponentially year by year. First there was nothing to report, then it was described as just a private meeting at which the mega-rich and powerful could chat candidly. Now we see beyond doubt that it’s a conference where the Power Elite plots and conspires.

The Telegraph reports (despite the misleading headline) that it was at Bilderberg that the decision to politically unify the European nations was taken decades ago, and where the foundations were laid, for example. This decision was taken in secret. It was a conspiracy against hundreds of millions of people. The creeping police state is often advanced behind the propaganda that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Well straight back at them.

James Corbett has put together this handy piece which covers these and other points which most will find interesting. It’s 13 minutes long but do try to watch it. Maybe sitting on youtube’s bandwidth would be a good idea if you do.

Better-off pensioners should voluntarily pay back their taxpayer-funded benefits, the Work and Pensions Secretary declares.

Iain Duncan Smith says he “would encourage” elderly people who can well afford to pay for their their own heating bills, bus passes and television licences to return the money to the state.

How’s about not dibbing out other people’s money to the better off in the first place? Oh, Cameron’s ruled that out (too many pensioners vote Tory, see).

Well no, people who don’t want to hang on to their share of the loot shouldn’t give it back to The Treasury. The beast needs to be starved. Give it away, give it to charity, give it to friends and family, but no way should the state have it back.

The Rt Rev Justin Welby is only 57 years old, so it looks like many more years of wrong-headed arguments like this:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched a stinging attack on the City, describing it as infected by “a culture of entitlement” that has left it disconnected from the rest of the country.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Archbishop Welby acknowledged that standards in the Square Mile are higher than in the past, but he said:

“In banking, in particular, and in the City of London, a culture of entitlement has affected a number of areas – not universally by any means – in which it seemed to disconnect from what people saw as reasonable in the rest of the world.”

I’d agree on the “culture of entitlement” which he mentions. We’ve seen much evidence of that. But he then gets very confused and argues for an entrenchment of that entitlement:

Remember Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi, the young Saudi who was so close to one of the Boston marathon bombs (though apparently a student in Ohio) that he was hospitalised with injuries (is that Michelle Obama with him)? It was widely reported that he was to be deported yesterday on national security grounds, but no-one seems to know where he is at the moment. Turns out that feds might have already had him listed as a terrorist and that he was “armed and dangerous”.

Glenn Beck has been lobbing some big bombs towards Janet Napolitano for two days now with more promised to come. His allegations are laid out on his site here. I know he has his odd moments, but if true (which I’m not claiming) this is bombshell stuff. This was the beef of it on today’s show –

For committing no crime, but for posting heartless comments on facebook about the missing girl Alice Jones, an idiot gets twelve weeks in prison.

For intimidating, harassing, abusing and hitting his girlfriend – in a sustained campaign of domestic violence and following recognition by the judge that it was “not a run-of-the-mill case of domestic violence” – the TV presenter Justin Lee Collins gets 140 hours community service.

Just as well he didn’t say something about her on facebook. He’d have really been in trouble then.

UPDATE: Azhar Ahmed (what d’you reckon?), for posting on facebook that “all soldiers should die and go to hell” after six British soldiers fell in Afghanistan, gets 240 hours community service. He’ll breeze through the 140 hours when he gets done for smacking his daughter about.

You do not defeat terrorism by rewarding terrorists, regardless of how many bleeding heart liberals argue otherwise. Want to know where that flawed approach leads to? Read UNIONISM DECAYED 1997-2007 - It's my first book and it explains what happens when you seeek to appease terrorists and call it peace. It's available right now for ATW readers so make sure you get your copy by emailing the editor! This is the book that dissents from the herd mentality that doing wrong can lead to being right. It doesn't and this book spells out WHY.

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